How to set UITabBarItem's unselected tint, ***including system items*** (iOS7)

ios ios7 uitabbaritem uiappearance
Olie picture Olie · Sep 26, 2013 · Viewed 9.2k times · Source

(NOTE: I see there are several similar questions on SO, but none of them seem to get at my specific issue of wanting to change the unselected appearance of both custom and system UITabBarItems.)

I'm working in iOS7. I have a UITabBar with some buttons. Some of them are my buttons, some are system buttons. Example:

UITabBarItem *searchButton = [[UITabBarItem alloc] initWithTabBarSystemItem: UITabBarSystemItemSearch    tag: navSearchItem];
UITabBarItem *bookMkButton = [[UITabBarItem alloc] initWithTabBarSystemItem: UITabBarSystemItemBookmarks tag: navBookmarksItem];
UITabBarItem *homeButton   = [[UITabBarItem alloc] initWithTitle: @"Home"     image: [self tabBarImageNamed: @"home-tab"]     tag: navHomeItem];
UITabBarItem *setingButton = [[UITabBarItem alloc] initWithTitle: @"Settings" image: [self tabBarImageNamed: @"settings-tab"] tag: navSettingsItem];

navTabBar.items = @[ searchButton, homeButton, bookMkButton, setingButton];

I can set the selected-button tint easily enough, with:

[[UITabBar appearance] setSelectedImageTintColor: MY_FAVORITE_COLOR];

I can set the unselected button text color to white:

[[UITabBarItem appearance] setTitleTextAttributes: [NSDictionary dictionaryWithObjectsAndKeys: [UIColor whiteColor], UITextAttributeTextColor, nil]
                                         forState: UIControlStateNormal];

What I want to do is set the UNSELECTED button's image tint color to white. I could set the unselected image easily enough, but that only works for my buttons. I want to do this for the system buttons, also. That is, I want my search & bookmarks buttons to also be unselected-white.

I'm pretty sure Apple will complain if I try to recreate their icons to make custom buttons. The docs are pretty specific that we shouldn't do anything remotely resembling Apple's icons.

Hints?

Thanks!

EDIT: The reason I want unselected=white is that, against my designed background, the default grey makes the icons/text hard on the eyes.

Answer

thgc picture thgc · Mar 6, 2014

The only way I was successful in setting a custom unselected UITabBarItem image to white was by using the following (white) image and loading it with a specific rendering mode

UIImage *tabImage = [[UIImage imageNamed:@"white_tab_item"] 
                      imageWithRenderingMode:UIImageRenderingModeAlwaysOriginal];

self.tabItem.image = tabImage;

"tabItem" being a UITabBarItem Outlet of the class

Credits go to Aaron Brager's answer: UITabBarController unselected icon image tint

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